Free EMR Newsletter Want to receive the latest news on EMR, Meaningful Use,
ARRA and Healthcare IT sent straight to your email? Join thousands of healthcare pros who subscribe to EMR and HIPAA for FREE!!

Email Address:

We never sell or give out your contact information.
We respect our readers' privacy.

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

A relatively new reader of EMR and HIPAA, Michael Archuleta, sent me his notes from the Utah Medical Group Managers Association 6/25/09 where the keynote speaker was Marc Probst. For those that don’t know, Marc Probst is the CIO of Intermountain Healthcare (IHC). IHC is huge in Utah and I think it does pretty well in a number of surrounding states as well. Plus, Marc Probst is also a member of the HIT Policy Committee. You may remember that I’ve talked about Marc Probst on EMR and HIPAA a few times before.

Anyway, I found some of the points that Michael captured interesting. I guess in the end I was interested to hear what Marc Probst was telling people. Michael Archuleta’s notes are as follows (published with permission and the emphasis added was mine to highlight some interesting parts):

Mark Probst – Intermountain Health Care – government wants to invest 42 billion in IT healthcare. IHC has 500,000 enrollees, 28,000 employees. 600 physicians. They are a unique integrated health care organization. Feels Obama framed the problem (related to health care, in previous nights TV pitch) well, and wants his plan in by Oct 09. Referred to how IHC is the lowest cost per capita.

Probst has met with 3 congressman and 20 government staffers. Using Mayo Clinic as a benchmark, could save 30 pct in chronic illnesses. There are 300,000 uninsured Utahns.

Four stages of an EMR. Third stage was commercial products. Stage four will have broad adoption of solutions. Second increased knowledge. Third is introduction of clinical decision support. A stage 3 EMR could save a 300 bed hosp at least 11M.

At LDS hospital there were 581 adverse drug events in 1990 and in 2004 there are only 270 . Their stats showed that waiting to 39 weeks (for OB delivery) was best for infants and reduced neonatal admissions. The docs said they knew this already and didn’t induce unnecessarily. But when showing them the data, they were in fact inducing. The same stats showed improved outcome with acute respiratory stress.

150 people are working on a new EMR system (for IHC) with GE and people from India. A complete clinical information system has automation (taking common tasks and automating it like voice, scanning, bar codes. Helps you with inventory management and pricing. Provides automated data entry with hot texting.), connectivity (using a network. Allows doctors to see and share information and this brings more specialists into the picture.), decision support (prompts and alerts for obvious things. Advanced decision support like glucose management and need to push the human mind.), data mining (using historical data to identify patterns and to test hypotheses).

Commercial systems were good at automation and connectivity but were weak on decision support. IHC was good in that area so they decided to build their own hybrid.

Rather than rip and replace, they aggregate, view, analyze, alert and then gradually replace existing systems.

The government HIT policy committee: Meaningful use says that to get money you need a certified system and have meaningful use. There must be a certification and an adoption. Must have the ability to do health information exchange. Time frames are aggressive: They originally thought they had until October to define requirements and then were told by the Obama administration that it was moved up to July 16. It will move from policy to a standards committee.

The intent and commitment of the people involved on the HIT committee is to do the right thing.

Questions from the floor: Doesn’t HIPAA preclude the ability to share information? In his opinion it allows for protection.

How do we get our voices heard? Have to get involved with AMA.

What is meaningful use? Capture discreet data like BMI, weight. Then there is an adoption process.

How will costs go down? If other things are in place, then we will minimize duplications. We may be connected but we can’t talk.

What about CCHIT? It is unclear what their role will be. IHC, for instance, is a hybrid of best of systems. Who would certify us?

Free EMR Newsletter Want to receive the latest news on EMR, Meaningful Use,
ARRA and Healthcare IT sent straight to your email? Join thousands of healthcare pros who subscribe to EMR and HIPAA for FREE!

Email Address:

We never sell or give out your contact information. We respect our readers' privacy.